I'M BACK!

Let me start off by saying the following- I’M BACK!!!

I would like to start off my saying that I would like to apologize for falling off the face of the earth since my last blog post in June. It goes without saying that I got caught up in a million other things. Between school and work (I shall explain) and trying to figure out internships and practicals and my social life (of course) things got a bit out of hand in terms of my infamous blog writing. So I hope everyone is ready for today’s blog post which is essentially the mother of all blog posts or the captain of the Titanic or the Einstein of physics…basically it’s gonna be a big one.

I will definitely write everything in good old bullet points and include a few pictures to make it easier to follow because let’s be honest, there is no way anyone is getting through 10,000 words even if you are procrastinating at work.

School. I know I decided to start off with the boring part of my life in Poland, but I mean that is why I’m here so it’s probably the appropriate topic to start with. The semester this year started fairly slow, but then took off full force to say the least. For almost two months we were literally in class from 8am until 7pm which proved to be fairly difficult especially with studying and being attentive with our patients during practicals. Speaking of practicals, we are now at the point in our schooling where we are given a patient and told to think of exercises for their particular disease or disability and work with the patient one-on-one. Sounds pretty “okkk and your point is?”, but it is SO cool (best word to describe it). Well think about it, you’re a student and you have your own patient to take care of and you’re wearing white scrubs and people think you’re important. Like I said, COOL! I was fortunate enough to get a few pretty good patients with diverse conditions which allowed me to think of original exercises and refresh my memory in terms of symptoms and treatment plans. However, I also had one patient who proved to be fairly difficult to work with. The only reason being that he just didn’t want to do the exercises. Let me just say the following- I have never had to be that creative in my life and for those of you who know me, creativity isn’t exactly my strong point so it took a lot out of me. This was a patient who basically made my life a living hell, but as many of you know, I don’t really deal well with people like that. I’m not going to say that I made his life a living hell because I didn’t, but with a few threats that included making him do his least favorite exercises since they were extremely painful allowed me to make progress with the patient. It’s funny because it was with this patient that I realized that I will REALLLLY like my future job because of the challenges that came with it. June 2013- can’t wait! 

My first time paintballing and only had two welts!

It's all about the look.

This is what I wear to class. Just kidding, Halloween! I was a nerd- typical.

Wilhelm, me, Adrian and Michal. This is what they usually look like.

Ania and I getting ready for Thanksgiving!

Valerie, me, Michal and Tim at Thanksgiving dinner!

Gosia's surprise birthday party!

Zosia came to visit :)

Robert, Dorota and Zosia at Malta!

We were trying on new outfits of course.

Krakow and the Wedding. Although I already told many of you about my wedding experience, I would like to make sure I have a written documentation of how much fun I actually had at this thing. I stand corrected- it wasn’t “my wedding experience” so nobody freak out. I am not married. The so-called “husband hunt” is definitely still in full force (I will get to that later on haha). So anyways, going back to the wedding. I used to always make fun of my friend (she shall remain nameless, but you all know who I’m talking about) who would always say something along the lines of, “I love, love.” And naturally, I would always make fun of her, but at this wedding I found myself saying the same thing, “I love, love.” I guess it’s not until you’re at big events that represent such an important union of two people that are in love that you realize how beautiful and touching this sanction really is. Even though I only knew the groom (and hadn’t seen him in probably 7 years), I felt like being at this wedding I was witnessing the true unification of a couple that has finally found the so called “true love.” Anyways, enough of the sappiness and me spilling out my feelings about love. The wedding. Yes. The wedding. It was so elegant and so relaxed that I forgot that I was wearing uncomfortable high heels and a dress that required me to stand up straight. Even though I only knew five people at this wedding, towards the end of the night, I was friends with most guests. To tell you the truth I have continued a few of the friendships that I made at the wedding. One of my new friends even came and visited me in Poznan! The networking I tell you! I don’t have many pictures from the wedding, but I hope these will work. Enjoy!

Don't worry the sweet table was right next to my table. Coincidence, I swear.

Amaaaazing cake!

My only picture from the wedding!

Family. I apologize for the choppiness of this section, but it was very difficult to express myself in a smooth manner where it all made sense, but I think you’ll get the jist of it. As many of you know, my grandma passed away in November. The whole family came in from around Poland and the States to say their final goodbyes. Even though it was a very difficult time, it helped to have the whole family there reminiscing together. My family and I really appreciate all the wonderful prayers and thoughts coming from everyone. I believe Mrs. Nancy Jones said it best, “You will miss her everyday, with every beat of your heart and she will always be alive as long as you remember her.” But enough of the sadness because Babcia Wanda wasn’t too good at that. She was all about the dancing and cracking jokes (even though I sometimes had no idea what she was talking about) and being a real babcia making you eat more than is humanly possible. So whenever you get a second, say a little prayer for her and I’m sure she’ll send you a potato pierogi or two from up there in heaven! 

The family!

Me and Babcia Wanda <3

Angelica and Wroclaw. For the past few years, I have been trying to get my friend Angelica to come to Poland when I am visiting and now that I am living in Poland, I have been trying to persuade her to come visit me in Poland. After some planning and figuring out of schedules and finances, we finally figured it out! Angelica came and visited me in Poznan for a few days before Thanksgiving and then I went to Wroclaw, the city that her family is from, for the day. I absolutely loved having Angelica in Poznan with me. She was able to meet my friends and see what my life in Poznan is like. When I went and visited her in Wroclaw for the day, we did a very fast complete tour of Wroclaw while getting some light shopping done and visiting the Christmas village, of course. I had an absolute blast. Since Poznan is only three hours away from Wroclaw, it wasn’t a hassle in terms of traveling which is nice. On the other hand, Polish railways are slightly turned upside down nowadays so delays are a different story, but all-in-all the traveling went pretty smoothly. And talk about a quick getaway to a new city! Once again, here are a few pictures. Oh and did I mention that Angelica was randomly interviewed and was on TV?! She’s so famous!

Angelica and I in Poznan

Love Locks in Wroclaw

At the Christmas village in Wroclaw!

She's famous!

Husband Hunt. I know most of you probably skipped all the other points in my blog post and went straight to point numero cinco because who doesn’t want to read about my so-called “love life”? I won’t get into too many details, but I will say the following- I love going on dates and apparently I love drinking a lot of tea because that’s what boys here in Poland do. I have never drunk so much tea in my life! I feel like I am officially an expert in that department- the tea one, not the husband one. Basically, I am still living the single life, but enjoying meeting new people. I will keep you posted if anything changes, but until then, keep looking for me :)

Natalia’s Surprise Birthday Party. A little background about my friend Natalia. I’m pretty sure I mentioned her before, but if I didn’t, here is the quick description: She is dating one of my classmates Nathan and she is my main workout buddy who happens to be from Canada which is why you may or may not hear me say “eh?” every once in a while. Thanks a lot Canada! Anyways, her birthday is December 23rd, but she never gets to celebrate because it’s so close to Christmas that barely anyone ever gets to hang out with her on her big day. As a result, Nathan decided that we should throw her a surprise birthday party. And who else to help in that department of surprises and parties? Who else, but the queen of surprise parties- ME (reminder: Katie Brennan’s 21st birthday extravaganza back in 2008…success to say the least)! About twenty of us are surprising her at a Greek restaurant she’s wanted to go to for quite some time now with balloons and gifts and most importantly, cake! I am very excited because when I say that she has no idea, I really mean- clueless! Unless of course she reads this blog post and well there went that. And after dinner and the big surprise we plan on celebrating out on the town. That leads me to my next point…

Home Sweet Home. Since my flight isn’t at 1pm, I will definitely make it on time! Believe me. A repeat of last year is NOT in the plans. I mean the flight is at one in the afternoon. I can make it. Right? Well we shall see. I am beyond excited to go home. I can’t wait to see my family and friends and the crazy new child in our home- Bobby. And when I say child, I mean puppy. He is apparently “driving everyone crazy” so I am very thrilled to experience this as well. It will be his first Christmas with us, so let’s hope we don’t lose all our ornaments this year. In all honesty, I really don’t have too many plans for the break, but that’s sort of how I “planned” it. I’m trying this new thing where I don’t do too much planning and just wait for things to fall into place because they eventually have to.

Finishing the First Year of Physiotherapy=Priceless

Here I am sitting at the airport in Warsaw using the free internet gate next to the duty free store (conveniently placed, might I add) waiting for my flight back home. And I realized that this is the first time in a long time that I have a free hour to finally get a post in so why not bust out the laptop from my very disheveled carryon and start writing! 

Let me start off with saying the following- I AM FINALLY DONE WITH MY FIRST YEARRRR! Obviously, I am very excited about that and must say very happy with the outcome of this school year except for the fact that it went by SO fast. I mean only two years left- how crazy is that? But going back to the school part- after our anatomy exam, our friends from class brought a bottle of champagne which we were sure to pop open in front of the anatomy building. Afterwards we went to the Rynek and grabbed dinner and drinks. At about 8pm, I decided that I was going to take a quick nap before I officially celebrated later that night. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I apparently have narcolepsy and am officially old, I woke up at 3:30am. Yup that’s right- I missed the whole party! Confused and ready to start my day at 3:30 in the morning, naturally I went online and didn’t know what to do with myself because well it was 3:30 in the morning and I was up! The following day was the Catalina Wine Mixer. PAH! (you will understand this if you watched the epic movie Stepbrothers) On Friday, a few friends of mine decided on doing a sort of pot luck dinner where everyone made something. There was Nathan and Natalia’s pad thai (amazingggggg…recipe in the next post) as well as classic taco dip made by Angelina and myself. To top everything off we even had sundae’s created by Sabrina and Olivia. Because our wine ran out quickly, this Catalina Wine Mixer quickly turned to a Tequila Wine Mixer (classy I know). Needless to say we had a blast and then went out in the city for one last hoorah. The next morning was slightly rough I must admit, but I was able to make it to the train station and survived a seven hour train ride to visit my family for the weekend before heading back to the wonderful US of A. Visiting the family was tons of fun, as always, and I was able to see the little kids which was absolutely perfect!

I know this post is all over the place, but I have to include my birthday celebration from two weeks ago. I hope you’re ready for this because it’s probably one of my top three birthdays. I hate to say this, but I do not have any pictures from that night because my friend Tim has them all and I was not able to grab them from him before he left to go home, BUT the second I get them, I will definitely post them so don’t worry. So my birthday this year was on a Friday so everyone expect me to go out starting on Thursday, but with all my final exams, there was no way that I would be able to do anything but study. On Thursday night, however, Fil and Adrian invited me to drinks at Poznan’s most expensive restaurant along with Wilhelm, Tim, Michal and Fil’s cousin. So we all got super dressed up (the boys wore suits and I even wore heels) and we met at Fil’s apartment. After hanging out for a little bit and waiting for Fil to change his clothes 100 times, the boys finally decided that we were going to change/spice things up a little bit. We first taxied over to the Blow Up Hall where we all got fancy drinks and the boys even bought a cigar. Afterwards we got a limo. I do realize that I am saying it very nonchalant, but that’s because I actually don’t know how to express to you how excited we really were. After we walked down expensive stairs through the expensive doors and were thanked by the woman wearing an expensive suit, we were greeted by a crisply white limo. To make a long story short, I will say this- we were going to be in the limo for only two hours, but three hours just sounded slightly better. The limo driver literally drove us around in the limo for three hours where we stopped at the dorms, friend’s apartments, the Eurocup stadium, the Biophysics building (the boys were determined to pee on it) and drove all over the Rynek. It was honestly tonssss of fun and can’t wait to see what the boys think of for my birthday next year haha!

I will end right there because I’m starting to get slightly hungry and I have a 40 zloty voucher waiting for me for lunch at the airport since my flight was rebooked and I will be getting home an hour later than expected. Gotta love those airlines sometimes don’t ya?! Toodles for now and I will post in three months! Happy vacationing everyone!

Bike and Beach Tuesday

Now that I'm warmed up with my blog posting and am trying everything possible to put off studying and I drank a large cappuccino not too long ago, I need to tell you about my Tuesday. Plus, I'm sure you're all trying to find ways to procrastinate anyways :)

After an eventful morning trying to explain to our crazy professor from Introduction to Physiotherapy (you would think it was sort of a blow off class...don't be fooled by the title- intro my you-know-what) that she is in fact wrong, I finally made my way to the bus station where I was going to make sure that we could rent bikes. I mean, that's what it said on the website, "Bike Rental at Bus Station". Unfortunately, living in Poland for a few months now, I knew that it couldn't be that easy. Let me just keep it short and say this- there is no bike rental at the bus station. After searching all over Poznan for a place to rent bikes, I finally found a place where Nathan, Natalia, Antosh and myself rented our bikes (with some difficult because Natalia forgot her state ID and only had her school ID, but after some bribing and a 500zl deposit we were finally on our way).

To be completely honest, I have never ridden a bicycle through a city. It was by far one of the hardest things I have done in a while. Between trams, people, manequins being placed in front of stores, we finally made it to the woods where we were to bike 13.5km to get to our destination. On the way, our friend Kasper joined (not the friendly ghost...he's a mean ghost haha just kidding) and we continued our adventure. It was so cool riding our bikes through the woods. Being mature medical students, there were numerous Mario Kart references and drills to get into single-filed lines, but after about an hour we finally made it to the lake. After we locked up our bikes on the pier, we had to take in all that Poland has to offer and stop for a refreshing beer- I mean we had just been riding our bikes for almost two hours, it's the least that we could do!

This is what the bike ride looked like the whole way!

Boys being Boys

Quick little piwo never hurt anyone right?

The rest of the day was filled with jumps off the pier and sand volleyball and being attacked by third graders throwing sand at us when we were in the water. Everyone had an amazing time and we were even joined by our three other friends that came a bit later. The weather was perfect- 85 degrees and sunny. I mean how was anyone expected to study on a day like that?! Natalia brought her books, but none of us allowed her to study. She ended up having a nightmare that night about failing her exams and getting kicked out of school (can I just add that she's the number one student in her class?). Me on the other hand, I dreamt about Taco Bell- well chalupas and hard shell tacos to be specific.

Jumping off the pier! Get it Antosh!

The B&B Tuesday group 

To say the least, we all had a blast and can't wait for exams to be over so we can do a repeat of B&B Tuesday. Sounds like a sandwich place doesn't it?

Quick Summary of the Past Month!

Due to the fact that I have been busier than a bee these past few weeks, I will try and give you a quick recap of what I have been up to! Bullet points this time....Enjoy!

• Beardyman Weekend
• I know it sounds as though I went to a homeless man's concert which I know many of you wouldn't be surprised to hear, but this was one of the coolest concerts I have ever been to. It was literally at the venue 2 steps from my dorm so talk about getting home quickly! Let me just give you a little low down on this fellow they call Beardyman: he is a beatboxer from the UK and has done shows all over the world. I have never heard anyone make then sounds that he does. The cool part is that all his music he creates with his mouth whether it's an instrument or a noise. Here's a link if you want to check him out yourself!
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3kyNGVK-hI
• I was able to go with the usual crowd of people including Tim and Fil, but also with a bunch of random people that I really enjoyed hanging out with. One of the couples recently got engaged so naturally, we had to celebrate after the concert was done. Let me explain something to you- Polish people love two things- drinking in order to celebrate something and celebrate in order to drink something. I must say, we had a blast singing Polish songs and attempting our own beatboxing tricks. I know everyone probably expected me to be the next Beardyman, but unfortunately after a few attempts, my friends thought it would be better if I just saved myself the breath. I was more than happy to comply with this request because I literally couldn't breath after my one minute rendition of a guitar solo.

• Amazing Race Poznan Edition
• I'm sure all of you have heard of the "Amazing Race" whether you watch it religiously or not. Well, guess who participated in the Poznan version?! Literally two hours before the race, my friend Natalia persuaded/forced me to do this race thing with one of our other friends Angelina. I'm not going to lie, I am SOOOO glad I did it. That is the only time that I will admit that Natalia had a good idea haha kidding. But honestly, I had a blast! Just a quick recap of some of the things we had to do:
• Find a purple bunny in the bushes
• Take a shot- you're not surprised I'm sure
• Sing and dance to a song in the middle of the Browar aka a huge mall
• Walk with a "kinder egg" across a crowded outdoor plaza
• Build a lawn chair from a box (we couldn't figure out some of the screws, so we just took them...oops)
• Answer a series of trivia questions (the winner of the 2010 Stanley Cup was one of the questions!)
• Although we did not end up winning, we did get fourth and that's only because the other teams took taxis everywhere AND two of the teams had bikes. Then there was us- running and taking trams everywhere. 
• After the race was over, we met these random Polish people grilling out in front of the dorms and hung out with the for a few hours. Talk about hospitality- all you can eat and drink for free! We weren't going to pass that one up!  

•  Anatomy Test and Celebrations
• We had our Anatomy Test last Monday so things were slightly stressful before that because we all needed to get a certain amount of points in order to be able to take the Final Exam. Here's the thing that absolutely positively flat out sucks- those tests that we took mean nothing for our final grade. That's right our final grade in anatomy is the final exam itself which will be coming to theaters near you June 13th. Needless to say, I have started studying, but have found that it is very difficult to study when it is literally 85 degrees outside during the day and a whopping 75 degrees at night. Details about the studying TBA
• After our Anatomy Test, everyone came to my place where we celebrated with a great game or seven of beer pong. Nathan and I had to teach the "foreigners" how to play and I must say, they quickly caught on! Here are a few pictures from that night:

Class reps!

We had two games going on at the same time!

The view from my room 

• Juwenalia
• On Thursday, all of our afternoon classes were cancelled and by "our classes" I mean all of the college students in all of Poznan. It was the beginning of this traditional four day festival called Juwenalia which means "Festival of Youth". The festival is kicked off with a parade of all the different universities in Poznan representing their school. People were dressed in the most absurd costumes from Avatar characters to soccer stars to cowboys. Our school was dressed in scrubs or white lab coats because we are the medical university in the city. After the chanting and the music, the parade finished at the tents where the festival began. It was filled with stages upon stages of performers, music, dancing, karaoke and food- basically everything a college student needs was within reach. We stayed there until the late hours of the night and I must say, it was a blast! It was literally all the college students in Poznan and if you weren't a college student, you weren't allowed to enter. Pretty VIP I must say haha. Here are a few pictures! 

The Parade!

My friend Antosh on the float...yes he shaved his head like Mr T

A few of us at the parade! So excited!

• Lifting Up and Chowing Down
• Natalia and I are officially workout friends. We have a series of workouts that we do together and we even try to wear the same thing- purely as a motivational factor. Not even kidding you, we both bought the same blue tank tops to go running in except the laundry gnomes or something took my blue shirt and so now we can't be blue tank top friends. Despite this tragedy, we still have managed to get a few good runs in and insanity workouts and other things that Natalia forces me to do haha. 
• So you probably noticed me mentioning Nathan and Natalia quite often lately. That's because they are my parents away from home. Well, Natalia's more like my mom feeding me and making me study. And Nathan- well Nathan's like my brother that says silly things and let's me push into walls. I always go over to their place and they (and by they I mean Natalia) make me fancy meals like stuffed peppers or fried fish or baked asparagus with lemon. We always have a blast together whether it's eating or making fun of each other or just plain old studying on the balcony. So glad I found the two Canadians! 
• Speaking of good weather and Canadians (never thought I'd use those two in a sentence), I am going on a bike and beach trip tomorrow with a bunch of Canadians. I mean this in all seriousness- 3 from Windsor and 3 from Toronto. Talk about having to represent the US of A...if only I knew more about hockey. Darn it! But yes, going back to the biking part- we're renting bikes for the day and biking 10 miles one way to go to the beach because it's supposed to be 90 degrees tomorrow! Yikes! We are all very excited- in fact so excited that I am currently not studying, but writing this post to you guys :) Gotta love it! 

I think that is all for now- I will post pictures from our B&B adventure tomorrow! Happy Memorial Day everyone! 

Jet Lag at Its Finest

Just realized that I never pressed the "publish" button on this post so here is a very delayed post :)

Guess what? I am back in Polska! To be quite honest, I was excited to get back to Poznan. Now, don’t look too much into that statement and start telling people that “Ola is never coming back to America!” or something like that. It’s just that after being fortunate enough to have a 3 week break from school, I was rejuvenated enough to want to head back to school and finish the last month and a half of classes and exams and be done with my first year in PT school! Yikes! You know what they say, “Time flies when you’re having fun!” Before I continue about my last few days back, I have to tell you about how ridiculous my flight back was.

My flight was scheduled for ten on Tuesday night. My parents and Rocky (of course) brought me to the airport where we had to wait in a 45 minute line to get my bag checked. I knew that my bag was over the limit slightly, but I thought that since there were three younger guys working the check-in desks that I could somehow distract them with my awkwardness and they would let my bag go, a few kilos too heavy. Unfortunately, when I walked up to the check-in desk, the one nasty, malicious old woman happened to be the one checking me in. When I say nasty and malicious, I mean the woman did not smile one little bit or even look my way. Needless to say, I sweet talked the lady into letting my 4 kilo too heavy bag through. I wasn’t so lucky with the carryon, however. Apparently they weigh the carryons now. Note to self- don’t pack all of your heaviest things in your carryon. The bag is supposed to weigh 12lbs. Mine weighed literally 30lbs. I wish I was kidding. So, my mom and I took out half of my things and got it all the way down to 14lbs. Now, if you know my mom and me, there was no way that I was going to let it go. Naturally, we walked away from the check-in desk where we put all of my things back into my carryon. Surprised? Didn’t think so. After this ordeal, I waited another 45 minutes in the security line and rushed onto the plane. The plane was for some reason not a LOT polish airline plane, but an Air Italy plane (I was as confused as you probably are). It was a nine hour flight filled with screaming babies, barking dogs, hunger and EXTREME heat. I must say that I wasn’t exactly the happiest camper when I was about to step off the plane. Oh and here’s the best part- when I first got onto the plane, the stewardess said that she would put my bag in the back of the plane and bring it back to me right before we would land since there was no room in my row 6 seat. As you can probably guess, I had to wait until all the people stepped off the plane to get my bag because nobody brought my bag to me which is fine, but here’s where it gets interesting. As the last few passengers are walking off the plane, I notice some random man walking with a red bag with a green ribbon towards me. As he got a bit closer to me, I realized that he was about to step off the plane with my carryon- the same carryon that was illegally too heavy! I immediately reacted and just said to the man, “Um, that’s mine. Thanks.” And I walked off the plane. It wasn’t until I stepped off the plane that I realized that due to the not-so-comfortable conditions I was stuck in for nine hours, I wasn’t exactly nice to that man. I noticed later on at the airport that he found his own carryon. Here’s the part that was interesting though- his carryon was blue, not red. Way to grabbing my red one.

After about 15 hours of traveling including three hours of standing in line, I hopped in a cab and headed to my room. I quickly showered and within 45 minutes, I was dolled up and waiting for the tram with my friends. It was our friend, Malin’s, surprise birthday party so naturally, I couldn’t miss it. All throughout the Old Square there are outdoor tables and umbrellas at all the restaurants and that is where Malin and her boyfriend were eating dinner. There was a group of 24 of us that were getting ready to surprise her. Of the 24 of us, only two of us didn’t speak a lick of Norwegian so singing “happy birthday” in Norwegian didn’t prove to be a success for the two of us, but everyone else nailed it (I think). Our group literally marched outside to where Malin was eating dinner and in front of hundreds of people started chanting “happy birthday” in Norwegian. Almost immediately, the people in the restaurant moved a few tables together and within minutes we were all “cheers”ing to Malin’s birthday. She literally had no idea that any of this was going to happen so to say she was surprised was an understatement. There was even a fire show in the middle of the Square that we were able to watch. When I got back from the Square, it was already 11pm, but due to jet lag, I decided to unpack and clean my room. I finally got to bed at 1am, only to wake up at 5am. Jet lag at its’ finest my friends. The rest of the week was filled with lots of meetings, emails, classes and catching up with friends. More to come soon!